Magnifications of paired micro-images emerging from a micro-lensing critical curve

Abstract

Studies of the inner regions of micro-lensed AGN during caustic crossing events have often relied upon the approximation that the magnification near a fold caustic is inversely proportional to the square root of the source-caustic distance. We examine here the behavior of the individual micro-images (one a micro-minimum, the other a micro-saddle) that emerge as a point source crosses a micro-fold caustic. We provide a variety of statistics on both the behavior of the two newly created micro-images, and some parameters which appear in higher order approximations for the magnification. We compare the predictions of these higher order approximations to the actual image magnifications of our simulations.

11 pages, 11 figures, 7 tables. Submitted to MNRAS